What’s your kid wearing for Halloween? He’s not going as Batman, is he? I see, like, a trillion child Batmans running around every Halloween, all wearing that foam (plastic?) muscle bib chestplate deal, with snowpants so they don’t catch a cold. Parents, your child isn’t going to catch a cold. He’s the goddamned Batman. Anyway, the point is, your kid’s Halloween costume is stupid – muscle bib or no. If you really wanna have a pissing contest with the other parents on the block, you’ll consider the Kid’s Walker from Sakakibara Kikai. Obviously from Japan, the Kid’s Walker is a robot that… well,…

Concerned less with bettering mankind so much as revelry, the team at Willow Garage has spent what I can only assume must’ve been an enormous amount of effort creating a ‘beer-bot’: a robot that – surprise! – goes to the fridge and grabs you a beer. ‘Now, Ty,’ you say, ‘Ty, this beer-bot business is old hat!’ I hear that. Musty, crumpled stovepipe hat. Every time you turn around, everyone and their grandma is building a beer-bot. The market saturation of beer-bots is just getting ridiculous. Gee whiz, guys. Slow down. But this isn’t grandma’s beer-bot. The PR2 (Willow couldn’t be arsed to give the…

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when I saw the title of this video. I assumed I was in for three minutes of watching robots unsuccessfully attempting to walk and their creators optimistically trying to convince the audience that this constitutes “dancing”. Oh how wrong I was. This is a small slice of awesome. The world has seen some pretty advanced robots, robots that can play the violin, robots that fight and even robot waiters, but this is fun, creative and mesmerizing. The robots, or hexapods, are competing in the 5th Annual Austrian Hexapod Dance-Off. Boy, those Austrians sure know how to party….

Robots, man. Freaking robots. Your robotic fix today comes from PhD student Ji-Dong Yim, who has built two cell phone robots, Callo and Cally (get it? call-y? cell phone? ah, never mind). Both bots run on Nokia N82 handsets, and can move and show emotion based on user input, be it by text, voice, or even facial expression. Yim claims the aim is to explore social robotic products, in an attempt to build better relationships between robots and their owners in the future. So, like a Furby, then, JD? Because these are way cooler than a Furby. Give yourself some credit, man. Totally brought some videos for…

Chinese farmer turned inventor, Wu Yulu, is finally getting some recognition after designing and building homemade robots. Yulu has faced some hardships in his life: a fire that burnt his house to the ground, being splashed by battery acid, and the stress of being heavily in debt. Yulu is finally getting a break and people are highly intrigued by his new inventions. He has built almost 50 robots which can pour drinks, use lighters to light cigarettes and even paint. He’s even designed one that can help with chopping up food for meals. After working on his creations for nearly 20 years, Yulu’s robots…

If you’ve ever wandered the streets of Berlin or Munich, then you know that shwarmas (or doners as they call them) are a kind of big deal there. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that German company Alkadur has invented a robot for cutting those delicious chunks of flesh that make for some of the world’s tastiest street food. The robot uses a combination of a pressure sensor, a robotic arm and a razor sharp blade to safely slice and collect tasty meat shavings for your enjoyment. Beyond safety, the robot can obviously work all day for very little cost – 10 Euros a day – and doesn’t have to stop take bathroom…

I’m one of the slim minority who dislikes Terminator. Don’t get me wrong, Schwarzenegger is nothing if not a vastly-talented thespian, I just don’t sit well with armed robots coming after me in the night. That said, this is pretty cool. MAGIC 2010 (that’s Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge) is a joint venture between Australia’s Defense Science & Technology Organisation and the Research Development & Engineering Command in the States, to help develop the next gen in sweet-ass robotic killing machines….